How do you ensure your wellbeing programs take a comprehensive approach to understanding how students feel and act? How do you make sure program elements are not only engaging, but also impactful? Although supporting the mental wellbeing of students requires a multi-faceted approach, it does not have to be complex. Equip educators with tools that work together seamlessly so that they can help students make meaningful progress in the pursuit of their academic and behavior goals to positively contribute to their overall wellbeing.
Student wellbeing encompasses all domains that contribute to success in school and in life—physical, social, cognitive, and psychological health. The heart of wellbeing efforts focuses on teaching students the skills they need in order to achieve that success. Consistency in skill development over time allows students to make the most substantial progress to promote their wellness. Explicit instruction on skills like setting goals, making better decisions, and collaborating with others plays into this development.
Unfortunately, many programs take a deficits-based approach to benchmarking students’ skills. They look at what is already wrong instead of what areas students have strengths in. What if we could identify key positive life skills and use that information to inform social-emotional wellbeing programs proactively? Strength-based measures look at the skills students already have to plan instructional systems to continue to support achieving outcomes. Both curriculum and assessment play a role in your district’s approach. It’s even better when assessment and curriculum are directly aligned. You’ll get the highest quality data to understand how children progress through the curriculum and apply what they learn in the classroom and their community.
Everyone is familiar with curriculum for academics. It is foundational for districts when it comes to guiding students in learning. Curriculum for students’ social-emotional skill development does the exact same thing. Students’ overall wellbeing increases as they learn life skills which build their protective factors and resilience.
You may have heard of social-emotional curriculums like Harmony, Move This World, or Second Step. Second Step social emotional curriculum is one of the most widely used social-emotional curricula in the United States. With so many curriculum choices, how do you determine the best one for your program? Start with the outcomes your district desires. Then, work backward toward identifying which curriculum providers best align to reaching those goals. With their curriculum, educators get easy-to-integrate lessons to help students achieve social-emotional skill goals. Having a curriculum provider for wellbeing like you have for academics encourages buy-in toward district’s social-emotional behavioral goals by making instruction easier for teachers and consistent with their experience for teaching other domains.
Do not underestimate the value of data to support your wellbeing programs. Assessment plays an equally important role in the success of your mental wellness initiative. Assessments, when evidence-based and research-backed, provide the strongest measure of understanding progress in students’ skill development. Your program fidelity gets even stronger when you select an assessment aligned to your curriculum. If you are already using Second Step for example, it makes sense to use the DESSA Second Step Assessments—the only research-based assessments fully aligned to the Second Step® curricula for Grades K-8
Combining strong instruction with strong data from an assessment gives educators and administrators a better understanding of how students apply the skills they learn. It is great to think that students know how to demonstrate collaboration or problem-solving, it is another thing to confirm that belief by observing students demonstrating the skills in the classroom environment. Consistency in assessment encourages tracking those observations over time to inform understanding of skill development.
Assessment serves as a necessary piece to your whole-child picture. Educators assess their students’ math and reading skills—they should assess students’ social-emotional skills just the same. It gives the school team a comprehensive understanding of student wellbeing by allowing for a look at academic data alongside life skills data. Furthermore, when assessment gets paired with curriculum, these progress checkpoints allow educators and administrators to monitor the chosen curriculum's effectiveness. District teams can see what’s working with the curriculum or not working to plan for the future of the initiative.
A comprehensive approach to wellbeing looks at all domains of students’ lives to inform a full understanding of a student—not siloes of just academics or just mental health. Many districts understand how to capture the academics piece but struggle to understand the ways in which to capture the social-emotional element. Looking at the role of social-emotional curriculum and assessment helps districts take the best next step forward in program implementation to enhance the mental wellbeing of students.
Curriculum can guide instruction of social-emotional skills. Assessment allows for data-driven decision-making that encourages differentiated instruction. It also supports measuring the impact of the curriculum itself. Considering all the factors that contribute to student wellness gives districts the most well-informed path forward to supporting students.
Ready to learn more? Check out the DESSA Second Step Assessments for data you can trust to support your social-emotional program implementation as a part of your wellbeing program.
